ANDalusian Sun: Lolomo wins after more than 2 years of gruelling competition!

Finally. I finally made it.

It had taken me months of dubble shifts at work to save up the money for his trip, the low-cost airliner in which I had booked passage to Spain was hideously overbooked, leading to a frenzied shouting match before boarding, and an air-control strike led to a delay of many hours.

Upon arrival they told me that my luggage had missed the flight and would not arrive for several more hours, the bus from airport into town broke down halfway there resulting in a 5-mile hike and the shower in my motel room seemed incapable of providing water much above freezing tempratures. Flopping down on the bed in utter exhaustion rather than trying to scrounge up an evening meal in the middle of the night only served to acquaint me with the lumpiness of the matress and the dust in the horsehair blanket.

But all of that was in the past now. The early morning sun reflected off an endless expanse of blue water, the temprature already was balmy, and the pristine white beach stretched for miles in each direction. Best of all, it was a remote area, and I wouldn't have to bump into doddering pensioners, abrasive, overweight German couples and their whiny kids or arrogant Dutch adonises every time I turned around. It would be 3 weeks in heaven.

Working my way down from the cliffs I noticed a large vibrantly blue beach-towel and, more importantly, the person lying on top of it. And ooh, boy, what a specimen it was. If the personality was even a quarter as intresting as the package...

Shaking my head to clear it from the daydream that had suddenly found it's way into my mind I changed my course and started moving in that direction.

Finally stepping from the rocky path onto the soft sand of the beach I noticed 21 other persons emerging from differnt entrances to the beach, each of them with their eyes fixed on the same target.

I picked up my pace, for, in the end, there could only be one. the first one to introduce himself.

So, time for me to start up a new game I think. I have allways liked the RAND games for a change of pace, also enjoying not having to spend hours on diplomacy. (Or feeling guilty/worried because I was neglecting to.) However, I still played few enough games that there's several nations I still really, really want to try out, so I'll be dropping the R(andom nation assignment) and keeping the A(nonymous) N(o) D(iplomacy) parts.

For those wondering what the introduction was about: I have absolutely no idea, I was certainly not planning to write that when I clicked the 'New thread' button, but whatd'ya gonna do when something unexpected leaves your keyboard? (Besides, you try to find an (English) word starting with And you can write a dominions-related story about. Androgynous? Andorra? Android?) However, now that it's written I'm rolling with it. Style points for anyone going for a pretender design including Heat1/Sloth1 scales.

Settings:

Era: Late
Players: 13.
Independents: 5
money/Resources/supply: Standard
Reseach: Normal
Special Sites: 45
Hall of Fame: 15
Random events: common
Renaming: On, but only use them for MM purposes. Do not use it to give false informetion. (ie: don't name your W2S3 Starspawn S5 for whatever reason) In addition, make sure to give your pretender the name of your nations, in caps, (ie: ATLANTIS) so they're all the same.
Graphs: On (I generally like graphs off, but for a game where it's far more difficult to coördinate and impossible to share information things are different.)
Victory: Hold 8 VP's. (Half +1 of the total.)

Hosting schedule: Relaxed. (We're on holliday at an Andalusian beach, remember?) Starting at 24h, but becomming longer as needed.

Map: Riverlands (Attached to this post together with final map file for those intrested in it.)

Admin duties will be taken on by Dimaz. (With my heartfelt thanks.) PM him with any admin-relate issues, since letting me know (or asking for delays in the thread) might give away clues about your identity.

A note on dropping out and going AI: Since this is supposed to be a competitive game it should go without saying I expect everyone to fight to the end to the best of his abilities. (But I'm saying it anyway at the urging of people who've had bad experiences with the "should go without saying" theory.) Of course, sometimes real life intervenes and you can't play on. If that's the case, please try to at least notify the game admin (Dimaz) to let him know you're dropping out. Additionally, DO NOT SET YOUR NATION TO AI YOURSELF UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. If you truly think there's absolutely no point in continuing to play, run it by the admin first so he can judge for himself whether to indeed put it on AI, or to (try to) convince you to play on or find a sub.

Banned nation(s): I really hate to ban nations, but LA Ermor really isn't the best candidate to have around in no-diplomacy games, so unless there's an outcry against this decision they will be banned.

Mod Nations: The second reason I don't want nation assignments to be random. I want to include a couple of mod nations in the game, since I think there's quite a few quality ones around and want to give them a chance to shine in a bigger audience. However, randomly handing a mod nation to someone who has never seen it before and might have no intrest in playing a mod nation doesn't feel like the right thing to do. Since this still is an anonymous game I didn't want anyone suggesting their favorite nation, so I made the one-sided decision to make Ulm, Reborn and Jomon, Broken Swords available to play. Both can be found here for those wanting to take a look. Both of these are well made, balanced, and intresting to play in totally different ways, and as such have received the official "Amhazair Seal of Approval" (TM)

Other Mods: Combo mod for this game including CBM 1.84 and Lesser Holy War. As well as Jomon, Broken Swords. In addition it adds a minor gem income to the new sites from the Holy War mod. Attached to this post.

Who can play?: Since an anonymous game takes the equalizing element of diplomacy out of the game, this will not the best game for newer players to participate in. I'm not reserving this for the most hardened veterans only, but would advice against signing up if you don't have at least a few end-games under your belt. (I will ask whether you're certain if I don't know you(well))

Nation choices: Each player picked three nations he'd prefer to play in order of preference. After finishing signups nations were assigned by Sasooli, attempting to give everyone one of their choices. Full list of nations:

1) Since both mods have been gone over by the mod-compatability project to be compatible with each other and CBM I initially thought no more work would be needed. However I stumbled across this post:

Quote:

The odd thing is that every MP game will still need a combo mod, because you can't just update mods to the latest version on llamaserver (for good reason). You could rename the file to include the version name each time I suppose,...

But those combo mods are extremely easy to make once you know the mods are compatible.

so apparently I was wrong.

Good news is it's apparently a very easy job. Anyone taking this up might want to wait until it's clear which (if any) of the mod nations end up being picked. (Also, if you prefer patiently teaching me how to actually do this myself instead of doing it yourself that would also be fine, allthough I'm afraid it will be signifficantly more work for you.

2) Handling nation assignments

3) Adminning the game.

Since I will be playing myself I can't be doing 2 and 3 myself. If no-one volunteers I'll be sure to guilt someone into it though.

Remunaration for either of these jobs will be a hearfelt push on the "thanks" button.

I would also like to request a predictable relaxed hosting schedule, something akin to the scheme I use in my relaxed games. like start with 24h and every 15 turns add 24h until end game settles on 120h. It's reasonable and players in my games enjoy the pace, except for those who like blitz-like games (but then again, relaxed games are not really their cup of tea anyway).

Q: If you ban Ermor then why keep R'lyeh?
Q: Are all other LA games available to choose from?

How much time do we have to prepare and make up our minds re. nation picks?

I would also like to request a predictable relaxed hosting schedule, something akin to the scheme I use in my relaxed games. like start with 24h and every 15 turns add 24h until end game settles on 120h. It's reasonable and players in my games enjoy the pace, except for those who like blitz-like games (but then again, relaxed games are not really their cup of tea anyway).

Q: If you ban Ermor then why keep R'lyeh?
Q: Are all other LA games available to choose from?

How much time do we have to prepare and make up our minds re. nation picks?

* I intentionally stayed away from fixing the hosting scheduled upfront (like I see you doing) since the people who normally play at a slower pace might be small/at peace/otherwise in a situation where they're fine with the schedule and thus there is no need to slow the game down. As I said though, I do intend this to be a relaxed game, so rest assured the turns will get longer as needed.

* I really see no reason to ban LA R'lyeh after the nerf/fixing of the popkill rate. I will admit not to have played them since, but from theoricrafting I would put them at a mediocre powerlever at best now, and everything I've heard about them from others confirms this. I also see no reason to ban any other nation. (Do you?)

* I have no specific start date in mind, I guess it depends on how fast signups go. I'm guessing that with waiting for signups and allowing a couple of days after nation assignments to practice a bit the very earliest we could get started is the weekend after this one.

* I intentionally stayed away from fixing the hosting scheduled upfront (like I see you doing) since the people who normally play at a slower pace might be small/at peace/otherwise in a situation where they're fine with the schedule and thus there is no need to slow the game down. As I said though, I do intend this to be a relaxed game, so rest assured the turns will get longer as needed.

Fair enough. I trust you not to make us slaves to dominions with crazy schedule

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amhazair

* I really see no reason to ban LA R'lyeh after the nerf/fixing of the popkill rate. I will admit not to have played them since, but from theoricrafting I would put them at a mediocre powerlever at best now, and everything I've heard about them from others confirms this. I also see no reason to ban any other nation. (Do you?)

I can't say for sure as with all the changes I lost track of current LA R'lyeh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amhazair

* I have no specific start date in mind, I guess it depends on how fast signups go. I'm guessing that with waiting for signups and allowing a couple of days after nation assignments to practice a bit the very earliest we could get started is the weekend after this one.